Bad Vibes: Ruminations From The DList
by Max Landis
Summary: Herman Schultz, better known to you mooks as "The Shocker," is taking requests. Write in to get a morsel of Shocker's unique perspective on the Marvel Universe; the thoughts of a mere man in a world of mortal gods. From the author of The Shocker: Legit.
1. Intro Chamber

Hi you.

You who just couldn't turn away. YOu got the comic bookies and the online whatever, the web series or however you do it, but you had to know more. Well, you're in luck, cause wikipedia ain't got what I got. I mean, I suppose technically it could, because of the, you know, open sourcing or whatever, but-

You with the details, I ain't gonna take the time to learn to edit that shit. At my age I've reached a point in my life where if people are trying to reteach me how to type information, I'm gonna punch them in the face. Besides, they've got all the good wikipages locked now ever since the goddamn civil war, cause of the fifty bajillion people adding "I'm With" to the beginning of Cap America's entry, that's just stupid.

But then, you people, the common people, you do a lot of stupid things. I can't count the times I've seen one of you idiots standing out in front of the Hulk like dinghys infront of a cruise ship, just staring.

It ain't a movie, DUMB ASS, he's gonna HURT YOU, COMPRENDE? Remember back when you were a kid and you fell off your fucking bike and it hurt? SENSE MEMORY. THAT, EXCEPT YOUR WHOLE PARTS. CRUSHED UNDER A GREEN FOOT.

That's NOT DIGNIFIED.

You know when Galactus first came to earth, people were CROWDING on the top of OFFICE BUILDINGS in New York to get a better look. Can you fucking believe that? Crowding on freakin rooftops! You know how stupid that sounds now? Of course, that was before people knew what Galactus meant, but who gives a shit, you know? People don't have a lick of fucking sense.

Now a while back on here I posted a pretty long yarn about the time I went legit, and got to the place I'm at now and whatever. I had to take it down due to Reed giving me shit and saying I'd out myself. Well la-dee-da.

Anyway, I was feeling a little antsy or tied down or whatever, and I thought maybe you guys would like to read my thoughts, thoughts from someone "in the biz."

So here's the deal. YOu send in a request of who you want me to talk about, I talk about them. That simple. First two, I'll talk on my own. After that, no requests, no talkie, or what have you, unless you make a request-o.

First guy I think I'll talk about is Chamber, just cause I've already said enough here, and to be honest, there's not really much to say about Chamber.

Never fought him myself; only seen him in person once, and I was out of costume, actually. Him and the rest of Generation X, fighting some guy in Westchester. I thought they all just looked like kids; I actually thought they were just one of those mutant gangs you used to see all the time in the early nineties, "freakpower" and all that.

But of course they were fighting...somebody, some name, so I figured they must be with Dr. Xavier or at least a school affiliate, X-Men special ed or whatever. I saw Chamber there for the first time; he had that mouth-y thing he had, I don't know what that's about, but I can make an assumption.

Something you don't see on mutants in the news; see, there ain't much talk about when the powers first manifest. Like did you know something like one in every fifty mutants kills themselves with their power first time out? Just suddenly WHAMDid I shoot lasers out my hands? Let me look at my hands and checkWHAM, no more teenager.

Then there's a minority in there that just completely fucks over their lives; accidentally kills a loved one, or mutilates themselves. What with him being all gothy and whatever, I figure it was this, or maybe he was one of them tragic past X-types. They get a lot of pretty shifty ass motherfuckers teaching at that school. I don't know what kind of screening process they have; some kind of ex-con work release. They had REMY LEBEAU teaching TEENAGE GIRLS, I mean, come on here, come on here for a minute, please. The old man always did seem kinda whacked.

Say, wouldn't that be fuckin crazy, if it was some sort of weird pedo-sex thing? The whole school I mean? I mean they never let the press in there hardly fuckin ever, and it feels like whenever they do there's always some kinda weird shit goes down. What if the kids in there are just naked all day or whatever, and they just spend all day fucking? That would explain the shit out of Wolverine's presence around prepubescents.

And didn't Magneto teach there for a minute, or some magneto-queer-lookin guy? Maybe it's like some kind of perv resort for mutants. Man, wouldn't that just take the cake, that would make so many people's fucking days, and shit, that would explain their fucking weird porn costumes. And I refuse to call that shit I've seen Rogue and Jean Grey and White Queen wear over the years a uniform.

A uniform, you want to see a uniform, look at the Fantastic Four. Bam, it's like they showed up for work at McDonalds. You know who they are: there's the big ass four on the front. They all wear basically the same shit.

Wearing spandex form fitted to your D-cups or a halter top that ends at the ribs or a pair of fucking X-shaped pasties, I'm impressed the Brotherhood Of Evil mutants never just started jerking off mid battle, those slinky bitches all over them.

And never any ugly people either, on the X-Men, you notice that? You get some weird looking people but there's fetishes for that, that blue whathisname McCoy, Hank McCoy, I'm sure he tickles somebody's pickle. I-

Gene Nation! Go figure I couldn't remember who they were fighting, I thought it was just one guy, but it was that mess of a team of lunatics, Gene Nation. Mutie terrorism was SO HUGE in the nineties, I guess I just got everything backwards. Shiiiiiit! Gene Nation! Ha! Anyone remember any of those motherfuckers? No? Nobody?

One was green, I remember. Real lime green too, really stupid. Haha, Gene Nation sucked.

So that's Chamber. Go ahead and comment on this and I'll talk about whatever you want, any of the shit that's gone down in my universe, heroes, inanimate objects, villains, you name it. I'll do it pretty quick too, most times.

So just go ahead and message me on the, you know, this thing here. 


	2. One More Day and Deadpool

Deadpool? Fuck. You wanna talk about lunatics.

Wait up, first about Felicia, since somebody said something about that. Yeah, it would seem she's human again, but the how and why of that is a little complex.

Now, if you read my last...thing, story or whatever on here, called The Shocker: Legit, then you know that it ended with Felicia getting gunned down by my dad in the upper levels of the Chrysler building, yadayadayak, and myself and Aleksei (to you new people that's "The Rhino") living on an island in an alternate dimension with a psychic named Miss Peelo.

This exotic (ahem) locale was chosen to protect us from inevitable reprisal after we-

Look, I'm not going to like, spoiler alert it or whatever. Go read The Shocker Legit, if you can find it.

Anyway, shortly after that there was this thing, a big civil war between the heroes centered around registration, and Peter Parker came out as being Spiderman. Then after what felt like about five months, suddenly everybody FORGOT that the motherfucker came out. I mean, I can't figure it.

I know I'm not affected. Peter Parker is Spiderman. Spiderman is Peter Parker. I figure it must be because I'm in the other dimension, but it didn't hit me. The poor guy's life did a complete *180; from life in a deluxe Stark Tower condo to back to living with his aunt. Oh, and the supermodel wife? She's gone too.

There must've been alterations to the timeline; I mean, I'm fucking straight out certain of that, no doubt. Something with Loki, Mephisto, The Beyonder, one of those big weird sons of bitches. Ask me about them, I'll tell you about them.

Anyway, no. Felicia's not all demony anymore, and we're both much better off for it. Not that I've been seeing her much lately, but fuck, I shouldn't complain to you. besides, she's coming up this weekend; we're gonna hit Earth-8101 for fourth of July, should be bananatacular.

Yes, Aleksei, I see you. I see you out there (he's waving.) He doesn't get that I can't hear him from in here, it's- I SEE YOU. HELLO. I CAN SEE YOU. He's pointing at his ear now like "I can't hear you" OBVIOUSLY, ALEKSEI. ALEKSEI. Come on.

He's wearing his favorite swimsuit. I SEE THE SWIMSUIT (he's trying to show me that it's got Nemo on it) THAT'S ACTUALLY NEMO'S DAD! I SAID "NEMO'S DAD, NOT NEMO." Does anyone know Nemo's dad's name? Someone write me in on here if you know Nemo's dad's name. Hold on.

Okay, that's all cleared up.

SO. Deadpool.

You know, I hope, what I think of wisecracking metas. If you do not know, let me illuminate you.

As an impartial observer, you no doubt enjoy the humor that comes from someone being all irreverent or zany or what have you during a super-powered confrontation. Because for you, on the outside, it's all broken down into little pieces, little bite sized morsels.

When you're actually in the shit, it's not like that. You almost never hear what the other guy is saying, it's just this frenetic blur, like being in a really long car accident. Now with Spiderman, it's obnoxious, because he really picks his spots to make sure you hear him do his stupid schtick.

With Deadpool, it's just freakin' bizarre. The man is genuinely insane; a real old school cuckoo nutjob. He's making jokes every fuckin' second, but they're not for you, or for bystanders, they're just him fuckin' talking, the man can't stop fucking talking. Like if he stops talking his healing factor doesn't work or some shit, you just hear him mumbling in that weird voice of his.

Oh, there's a thing: his voice is EERIE, which makes the fact that he's talking all that crazy shit even spookier. It's all gravelly and throaty, but it cracks and goes high pitched whenever he gets excited, which is like half the time, so it's just hell on the ears. Listening to him talk confuses your brain.

I've only been in combat with him once; went pretty smoothly, actually; vibrated his sword to shit, shrugged off the bullets and hit him with a few level four vibroshocks to shatter his bones. He ended up Deadpudding.

But even then, I think the only reason he didn't immediately come after me was because he got distracted by some billboard for a cellphone or something. I'm tyring to tell you, I mean, the guy has this reputation of being this legendary hitter, but he's a crackpot, totally nuts, you don't even know.

I remember there used to be rumors that he kept an old lady hostage for like, years. Stockholm Syndrome'd her. Blind something, I don't remember. Just living with an old lady as his hostage.

Also, side note: Deadpool smells like burnt. Not in a meaty way, either; like a deep, charcoally smell, tinny. A taste bad smell. And it reeks through that Spiderman-rip off costume of his, which, may I add, doesn't fit right. It always has these weird ripples.

Okay, so that's Deadpool.

Who you wanna talk about next? 


	3. PowerPack and Doctor Octopus

Power Pack, what the fuck, are you fucking with me now?

I swear to christ, Power Pack, you're gonna even fucking bring them up? You want to talk about disgrace, you want to talk about embarrassment, talk to a villain about the Power Pack.

Because they're not fucking around, those kids. They're not. Density control? Energy blasts, flight, control of gravity, these are serious fuck-you-up powers, it's the equivalent, to you pedestrians, of kids with knives. Powers are powers, and the fact that those kids aren't villains is some kind of testament to the universe being completely cockeyed.

And they all of course were fucked up in later life, in Excelsior and The Runaways and The Loners, all those idiots. I mean, I got lucky. I've only fought them once; pretty early in my career as a costume guy, too. That's a lesson in humility if there ever was one: getting punched directly in the face by a little kid, that is an ugly emotion.

I always assumed it must've been their parents experimenting on them. Something I do appreciate: now that some of them are grown up, they're not very good looking. It's always nice to see an average schmuck or two on the side of the angels, considering so many of us "villains" ain't batting too well in the looks department. I saw one of them, the one with the Loners, whatshername, and I was like "Eh."

Do you know how rare it is to be like eh when you're looking at a female meta? Still, it's empowering. Not everyone can be a winner, honey. Somebody has to be the Power-Pack.

If you ask me to talk about "Doctor Octopus," really that's a can of worms, cause you're asking me also to discuss Otto Octavius. I'm being real here, they're like two different people slammed together.

On the one hand, you've got otto. Otto's always been soft on me because he's a science guy, and I, despite my better nature, am also a science guy, and he sees that and relates to it. He's a bit of a prick in that way; an intellectual elitist. He'd look down on guys like Gargan and Dillon and Marko; barely talk to them, really, even if he was working with them. He always treated Aleksei like some kind of awkwardly shaped sentient sledgehammer.

Though, I must admit, Aleksei does lend himself to this comparison.

No, but where Otto was at home was with people like me, Connors, good old Mark Raxton, that's when he'd lighten up. Now, don't think I'm trying to say the guy was, you know, warm or something, he wasn't. But he could certainly get personable, friendly even.

The real secret is that he isn't THAT smart, especially not as far as villainous super geniuses go. I mean, he's probably only a little bit smarter than me, in terms of electronics and machinery. Sure, when it comes to atomic physics and nukes and shit, he's amazing, but the man is NOT a prodigy.

But every mad scientist HAS to be a polymath. Whether they are or not.

Otto's actually who I point people to when they ask me my definition of a great crook; him and myself. Qualities of a great crook, in my eyes:

1. Sanity. You can be neurotic, obsessive, whatever, but you always have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it, and it has to be something that would make sense to your average joe on the street. Don't kill people unless you absolutely have to. You lose that, you're just a mad dog in spandex, running in circles.

2. Competence. You gotta be absolutely reliable to put forth whatever you say you can. For example, when Otto come out and says look, I can build you robots, plan you a heist, kick the shit out of you with my freaky doily arms, he means it. He can back all that up, the dude holds clean wins over Spider-Man, Iron-Man and The Fucking HULK. Man is sixty five years old.

3. SUCCESS. That's the biggest one I think. You gotta have some kind of success rate. In my life as Shocker, I have perpetraited EXACTLY two hundred and seventy heists, hold ups and larger scale jobs. You know how many I got away with? One hundred and twenty. Yeah, you don't hear about those much on the news, do you? But then you look at a guy like Adrian Toomes, he's got what, a ten percent success rate? And that's not faulting Adrian, I love that man to death.

Now you look at Otto. Nine times out of ten, if Spider-Man doesn't show up, his shit goes down smooth like Cool Whip. It's cause he's a perfectionist, really.

Now I don't want you to for a second think I'm saying Otto is a "good" person. He beat Felicia almost a death just to put an exclamation point on the sentence "I hate you Spiderman." He nearly poisoned all of New York using Newspaper.

But there's always a means to an end. And I respect the fuck out of that.

Until, of course, we leave Otto Octavius and move onto Doc Ock. Doctor Octopus.

Ugh.

Fucking scumbag.

Otto is almost like, I don't wanna say like multiple personality schizocrazy or whatever, but he's certainly at least got some kind of manic thing going on. He gets too into it; like way too into it, the whole villainy thing, to like a weird fetishistic thing. He's prone to constant monologuing and grandiose statements of intent, to the degree that it's...

Well.

Annoying.

The Doctor Octopus side is so fucking melodramatic and fever-pitch, it's hard as hell to work with him. I've never been in an "Ock led" Sinister Six, but I imagine it would be a living hell, him barking orders at you the whole time. He's just so aggro and rude, I hate it. And it's worse than just the usual criminal psycho assholeness, because it comes from a place of intellectual contempt.

He's hurtful. He can be a hurtful guy. It's hard to decide what's worse; some punk bitch like Ricochet shitting on you during a fight, or Otto casually demeaning your own efforts to help him.

Then again, what do you think is worse? A stupid person giving you shit because they're stupid, or a smart person giving you shit because they know you they can?

That's Otto Octavius, I guess. It's a person who shouldn't be as awful as they are.

So, who do you want to hear about next? 


End file.
